"This book revisits and updates some classic Anthropology - the Xhosa in Town series - based on research in the South African city of East London conducted during the 1950s. The original studies concluded that there were two opposed responses to urbanisation in East London's African locations, one embracing Westernisation, European values and Christianity and another opposed to it. The studies have been the subject of intense anthropological debate. Leslie Bank returned to the areas of East London studied in the 1950s to assess how social and political changes have transformed these areas, in particular the apartheid reconstruction of the 1960s and 1970s and the struggle for liberation followed by the post-Apartheid period in the 1980s and 1990s. Bank has added important theoretical insights to this rich ethnography, and forged strong links with issues that transcend the particularities of his urban study."--Provided by publisher
East London is a minor coastal city with a fragile economy based largely on the food, motor and textile manufacturing sectors. Between 1945 and 1960 the economy of the city grew rapidly registering annual growth rates in excess of 10%. This growth was based on secondary industrialization in the manufacturing sector. However, since the inauguration of the homeland policy which wedged East London between two impoverished, self- governing homeland states, Transkei and Ciskei, the economy of the city has fared less well. Low annual growth rates were recorded throughout the 1970s and 1980s despite efforts by the Apartheid government to shore up the local economy by offering attractive industrial decentralization incentives in the region. The fragility of the city is not only based on its regional location, but on the absence of mineral and power sources and its distance from major metropolitan markets. Being situated in one of the poorest provinces in the country, East London's growth has always been limited by a weak local consumer market (Swilling 1987: 140). While the economic prospects for the city have recently improved with the dismantling of the homeland system and the centralization of the Eastern Cape's regional government in nearby capital of Bisho (30 minutes' drive from East London), the city is still badly in need of major economic investment to cater for its rapidly growing population. During the past decade, there has been a massive transfer of population from rural to urban areas in the Eastern Cape generally. This occurred as a result of a softening of homeland borders in the mid-1980s, the removal of the influx control laws in 1986, as well as the deterioration of agricultural prospects in a region gripped by a crippling drought throughout the 1980s. These factors have ensured that East London became the tar-get of a sustained wave of rural-urban immigration. Dozens of new informal settlements have sprung up all over the city during the past five years, while the established townships within the city limits have become hopelessly overcrowded. The research for this project was conducted in East London's most congested township, Duncan Village. In 1995, it had a population of approximately 100 000 people. Between 1964 and 1979, Duncan Village was the target of massive forced removals. ; Digitised by Rhodes University Library on behalf of the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER)
Contemporary critical approaches to political economy can be divided into two loose broad categories. First, there are critical institutionalist accounts. Second, there is what may be called a broad critical humanist tradition. By bringing together works from both these traditions, this review essay aims to highlight key differences, common ground, and possible ways forward.
